


Mountain Storm

by Lunarium



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: F/M, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7823494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/pseuds/Lunarium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sigrun goes missing without a trace, and fearing the worst, Aksel goes searching for her in the mountains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mountain Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yuuago](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuuago/gifts).



> Written for Yuuago who requested Sigrun/Aksel and the fear that someone might be dead. I of course could not pass up tormenting Aksel in this manner! It was great joy writing for you! 
> 
> Many thanks to my amazing beta Elleth! :)

“Pay attention!” 

A hand grabbing for Aksel's wrist followed the chastising swat, shifting the position of his hand around the grip of the rifle. A few feet off a photographer snapped another photo, perhaps for the archives, but Aksel didn’t have time to tell him off, that he didn’t wish for all of them to be included in the archives documenting the end of the world. His attention kept averting back to the long winding mountains surrounding the camp, the black peaks jutting into the sky ominously. The great sea on one side, the mountains on the other, Dalsnes stood vulnerable, trapped, protected only by a fence as authorities walked around it like hounds trying to protect their owners in vain from an enemy that could infiltrate through their defenses. 

“H-how many rounds can I fire with this thing again?” Aksel asked. 

His grandmother, Berit Eide, shook her head and tutted.

“I’m not doing this again!” she said before going through the entire tutorial once more. 

Aksel’s eyes shot back to the mountains even as he nodded to his grandmother’s instructions. 

Sigrun had ventured towards the mountains a week ago and not returned, the longest she, and anyone, had ever been away from camp. Since then Aksel has spotted smoke issuing from the mountain, sometimes sparks, but never a sure sign that it was Sigrun. Neither Ingrid and Gøran had any idea why she had gone, other than that she was quiet and her eyes strangely wide the day before she disappeared to the mountains. Apparently she snuck out beyond the fence undetected in the middle of the night. She never promised to return, didn’t even leave a note. 

Aksel feared the worst. 

From afar had come news of the fate of the Rash victims. Aksel first passed them off as mere rumors spread in the hysteria of the world’s downward spiral spurred by the strange pandemic, reminiscent of the zombie movies they used to amuse themselves watching in the past. That was until the reports of the troll sightings reached Dalsnes’s puny fence. Aksel himself had caught a glimpse of a moving shadow over the waters near the mountains. 

And now Sigrun was lost somewhere there, gone without a trace. 

The reports went on to say that trolls could fuse with their victims. He shuddered at the thought. 

“Are you listening to a word I’m saying, birdie?” Berit chided. 

“Yes, Grandma,” Aksel said hastily. 

“Then let me see you shoot that target.” She pointed to one of the wooden targets erected just the day before for practice. It was decreed by the ruling officers that all surviving members of the community had to learn to shoot in case the camp was under attack by the mysterious foes. 

He took aim and fired. 

_Not bad_ , he thought and grinned at his grandmother who stood with her arms folded, unimpressed. 

“Good,” she said. “Let’s just hope you won’t have need to use it, especially not on Sigrun.” 

“Grandma!” 

“I still don’t think you have to go chasing after her,” she said. “Considering who we’re talking about here, you have nothing to worry about.” 

“Oh? Do you know something I don’t?” he asked, trying to keep the eagerness from showing in his tone. He studied her face for any inkling of information, but Berit always had a good poker face. 

“No, puppy,” she said, shrugging with a smile. “But I trust Sigrun not to get herself killed. She has her reasons for running off to the mountains. As for you…” She sighed and shook her head, but the moment for insulting him disappeared when a few drops of rain fell on their heads. They both glanced up. The sky was still light, the drops coming in tiny spurts, but darker clouds rolled and rumbled farther in the distance. 

“You shouldn’t go now. It’s going to storm badly later tonight.” 

“I’m not going to wait, I don’t care if I catch a cold,” Aksel said, then a little madly, “I don’t care if I get the Rash either. I just want to make sure Sigrun is safe!” 

“Aksel!” 

Slinging the rifle over his shoulder, he quickly embraced Berit and set out without another backward glance. 

Near the fence where a guard’s station stood, officers were arguing with a few of Dalsnes’s residents. Interrogation, Aksel recognized, willing himself to just keep going. The past few days had been filled with reports of things going missing from the guards’ stations, and authorities were going to each family with questions. They still hadn’t come to Aksel and Berit, so he didn’t have any idea of what had been taken. He didn’t care much for it either. 

As he passed them by one of the guards turned and gave him a look. 

“I have a license to work outside the fence,” Aksel reminded the guards. “I’m a colleague of Gunnar Fisker, and I carry goods from the boats to the camp. And this is _my_ gun.” 

The guard gave him a scrutinizing, brief glare but nodded his head, returning to his interrogation. “This one knows nothing, Eirik. We’re wasting our time. Call the next one over.”

*

The wind picked up a little more with each step until the coat tails and the buckles of Aksel’s belt billowed about his knees, the metal of the buckle striking against his knee painfully. The rush of wind blew against his ears, and he screwed up his eyes as debris from the ground gusted against his face. Shifting towards the path of the wind, he opened his eyes and glanced up at the mountain, and the first thing he saw drained any hope of finding Sigrun well.

Odd scratch marks, white against the black mountain’s surface, ran the length of the wall, around the corner, the indents looking horribly like they were made by claws. The image, of shadowy beasts, Sigrun’s form contorted or lost in their grip, her screams muffled in their distorted bodies, and the claws that marred the mountain side, the same that would claim her life. 

“Stop thinking this way,” Aksel told himself firmly. “Sigrun’s smarter than that. If she can disappear without a guard noticing her, she can slip by a giant’s notice.” 

The heavy wind howled in response. 

Shivering, Aksel turned up the collar of his coat, shifted the rifle into his hands, and marched on, following the clearest, flattest path he could find. If Sigrun had come here, she would have found this the easiest path to take, and that meant she must have traveled upward. He ascended the mountain, one hand on the wall to keep himself steady as the dark clouds formed overhead, dimming visibility. The wind picked up. 

“Sigrun?” 

With each passing second the world kept growing darker, swallowed by the approaching storm, the drops coming in thicker and more frequent, chilling the back of his neck. And still there was no sign of Sigrun, no sight of any of her belongings, nor a mark on the wall, no lingering scent, no body…

 _That’s fortunate, at least_ , he thought. _But where is she?_

If only he could see the mountain wall better. He had a tiny flashlight, but batteries were becoming limited supplies until Gunnar could get them another shipment, and he only used his when it was necessary. Now was one such situation, he supposed, except it could draw any foes towards him as well as Sigrun. 

_You have a rifle with you, dummy_ , he reminded himself, sick of squinting in the dark. One hand clasped it, ready to pull the trigger, the other searched his pocket for the flashlight, switching it on against the wall. 

He blanched. The entire wall was painted in white, strange inscriptions. The scratch marks, the sense that something not right was happening here. 

Bile rose to his mouth, his mind immediately thinking of a different sort of foe: not supernatural, but men gone feral in light of a world upturned with no government, resorting to erecting a community based around their own rules, conducting inhumane rituals… 

“Sigrun, please be okay!” 

Somehow the rustles of the leaves thrown about from the winds sounded like stomping of giant’s, or worse, men’s, feet—Sigrun’s captors. 

“Who’s there? Who are you? Have you done to Sigrun? Sigrun? Can you hear me? Yell if you can hear me? I’m coming!” 

He sprinted towards the source of the noise then froze at the sight of another white mark, another ominous sign, and the largest one yet. The marks were larger than the ones he had seen before, an entire chunk eroded away by a strong hand. 

“What did this?” he cried out. 

A shuffling of feet behind him coupled with a sudden burst of red light, and he spun around, pointing his rifle right at the other. 

“Hey, watch it, buttface!” 

Blinking, Aksel lowered his rifle, breathing a sigh of relief but also disbelieving, his mind still reeling with the story built in his head. 

“Sigrun? Is that you?” 

“Aksel?” Sigrun said, equally as surprised as confused as him. “What are you doing here?” 

A cast of light fell on him, and he realized what it was a moment later: handflare. 

_So…that’s what it was_ , he thought, thinking back to the camp. _That’s what was stolen from the guards’ stations._

In Sigrun’s other hand she held a paintbrush dipped in some white, thick paint, the tiny bucket hastily tucked in the deep pocket of her pants; some of the paint was still leaking out, dribbling down her pant leg like white blood. Another stolen item, perhaps. 

“So you’re the one who’s been stealing from the guards!” 

“And one of the residents who’s an artist,” Sigrun said. “I’d like to think of it as borrowing. Why are you here?” 

“And those marks?” 

“They’re there so I or the others won’t get lost. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to get lost in the mountains, I had to find some way to mark them so we all knew where we are—really, Aksel, why are you here?” 

“But why not write in a language—”

“Just in case there are those we don’t want in on our secret, and not everyone speaks the language—Aksel, really—” 

“But the claw marks!” 

“That’s how the mountain was born, I guess—Aksel if you don’t…Aksel!” 

“Sigrun!” Without thinking, Aksel ran to hug her, taking her by surprise. “You are not dead! Oh thank heavens, you are not dead!” 

“Of course I’m not! I’m not planning to for a long time if I can help it,” Sigrun said, voice muffled in his coat. “What made you think I was in danger?” 

“I thought you had come down with the Rash and came here to die away from us, or you were getting supplies for us and were attacked by one of those trolls they’ve been spotting everywhere, or you ran into a group of violent men—”

“Aksel, don’t be ridiculous—”

“You were gone a week! I didn’t hear anything about your whereabouts in all that time! No one knew what happened to you!” 

Sigrun’s eyebrows shot up. “It’s been that long?” A small smile crossed her face as she peered over her shoulder. “Guess I got so carried away that I lost track of time, then!” Extending out her hand, the light of her flare illuminated the next mountain, where, clearly visible, was a small light within a cave. Shadows moved within. 

Campfire. 

“My cousins were coming over to visit when the pandemic broke out,” Sigrun explained. “I got the news the same day your grandmother arrived. They wrote to me, gave it to Gunnar who could not take them all on his boat when they were still waiting for part of their group to join them, but would deliver the message—come on, we need to find shelter, it’s getting worse.” 

She led him around the mountain, moving up the path with quicker ease than Aksel had. She located a small cave just large enough to squeeze them both in. 

“My cousins told me there were others traveling with them,” Sigrun continued when they were settled. The roof of the cave provided a canopy from the pouring rain, allowing them to sit at the mouth with their legs dangling down, getting a good glimpse of the drop below and the fellow mountains along the range. As they watched the other group move about in the mouth of the cave, someone had come out, flashing their light in a series of code towards their direction. Sigrun signaled back. 

“They’re asking if I need assistance,” Sigrun explained. “I told them I’m with a worrywart but otherwise caring loser.” 

“Er, thanks—who are the others with your cousin?” 

“Tourists made homeless from the outbreak,” Sigrun explained. “Some found places that would take them. Others weren’t so lucky. We’ve been calling them the deserted. They’re not very fluent in Norwegian, and you got all sorts here: exchange students, athletes coming in for an international competition, musicians belonging to a traveling orchestra, people traveling the world before they settle down…all stuck now, forced to become part of Norway but not being part of Norway at the same time.

“They’re just happy to find anyone they can safely travel with. I offered to help them find a place to settle in. When I knew they must have been close, I came here, sneaking supplies from the guard’s stations whenever I could, and have been helping them set up camp. Eventually some will move over to Dalsnes. Some will find a way to live on the mountain itself. Some might find a neighboring community nearby. But so far, we’re all alive. After all the news that’s been going on, that’s the most important thing. We’ll figure out whatever comes next when we get there, if things don’t return to normal soon.” 

She leaned her head slightly back and sighed, the shadows of not having slept in days suddenly appearing on her face. But she was still Sigrun Larson. Maddeningly so. 

“Hey, is that your grandmother’s rifle?” Sigrun asked, her eyes still closed. “We spotted some mountain hares about. If we find a few, we can start a farm and get everyone fed.” 

“I’ll keep an eye out for them,” Aksel said. “Grandma taught me how to shoot very well. Just focus on resting. You’ve done a lot work helping these people.” The heat rose to his cheeks with the next couple words, but looking at her, the joy of her being there next to him, alive and tired and still cracking jokes—“You’re amazing.” 

Smiling tiredly, Sigrun yawned as she leaned towards him. “You’re not so bad yourself, coming in here to check up on me.” The brush of her lips on his had to have been brief, but it felt like all of eternity, as long as the endless pouring of the rain. “Thank you for reminding me I needed to sleep.” 

Her arms laced around his and her head nuzzled against his shoulder, she slept soundly, the first in days, and well-protected. Aksel didn’t even need the rifle out, feeling secure in not seeing any threat about, but he kept an eye out, watching and listening to the downpour of rain mingled with Sigrun’s soft snores.


End file.
